#Single Underline

[godisaknife]

since im insomniac and reading i have a question for my fellow readers

[txttletale]

me when i actually care about racism and in fact care about it so much that i straight up forget what the original controversy was and confidently assert it was something completely different because i definitely care about it beyond using it as a bludgeon against the Evil Trannies i constantly call pedophiles

[queenerdloser]

so thinking back i haven't reread the captive prince trilogy since kings rising came out. which is wild bc it's one of my favorite series in the universe BUT also tracks bc when it exists in a subsect of my books where i know if i read it my entire personality will be subsumed. but i'm rereading them now now and my GOD what a delight. i devoured the first two in a day and remembered exactly why they were so so so so good. and i've saving kings rising bc that one changed my brain chemistry when it came out, i've never read such a tightly done, masterfully paced final book in a series to match it.

[not-poignant]

Hi! I've spent this whole week binge-reading all of the Underline the Rainbow series and I'm obsessed. Thank You for creating this incredible world!

Sorry if these are questions you've answered before somewhere but I'm really curious about female Omegas and Alphas, especially in relation to Hillview's sister-site that was mentioned briefly.

Firstly, seeing as knotting and penetration are a big part of how Omegas manage heats, does this mean that female Alphas aren't able to consummate heats effectively? (If so, I imagine this would be a big source of insecurity for female Alphas who are attracted to Omegas!) Are female Alphas still able to create claim bonds?

I was also wondering what the reasoning is between having the different sites be segregated by primary sex in this way. Why was the decision made to have a separate sister-site specifically for female Omegas instead of having Hillview accept all Omegas regardless of primary sex?

Hallooooo!

I'm so so glad you're enjoying the series! :D

So, when it comes to women alphas and alphas who have uteruses, I am actually undecided on if they also have pseudococks or not at this point, but we do know from the worldbuilding that we absolutely don't need knotting or penetration to actually solve a heat.

The thing that matters most is an alpha's pheromones - and this is actually seen literally within Underline the Black, when Gary's closeness, his saliva, his pheromones, are the thing that resolves Efnisien's agonising, corrupted heat. So we've seen 'don't need knotting or penetration to solve a heat' actually play out within the story.

Temsen makes it very clear that if Gary had provided solid closeness, touch, and intervention earlier, Efnisien would never have needed to go through so much pain.

We also see in Underline the Blue that where Nate assumes he'll need a lot more penetration and knotting to get through his heat, Janusz demonstrates that a lot of the time he just needs closeness and pheromones, towards the end getting Nate to scent him, which calms him down better than a knot and actually finishes his heat much faster. So while the knotting in that circumstance absolutely helped, it was the pheromones that soothed and ended the heat the fastest.

In fact Nate will have to unlearn the idea that 'lots of penetrative sex and knotting' is what solves a heat, this is what Christian brainwashed him to believe. Janusz is already demonstrating that closeness, genuine intimacy, trust and safety, and the right pheromones, go a really long way to making heats pass as smoothly as possible. (The semen helps a lot, but that can be ingested, and applies in other ways, and likewise, alpha women secretions can be the same).

I'm certain that when it comes to most f/f pairings etc. the same thing applies regardless of what's going on between their legs (it is common in many omegaverse stories for women alphas to also have cocks or pseudococks and knots / pseudoknots. Since this isn't relevant at all for me in Underline I've never really sat down and kind of made it official either way, but we do know that all alphas can resolve a heat for an omega without knotting/penetration. I'm pretty certain women alphas / alphas with uteruses have zero insecurities re: bonding with omegas, or helping them through their heats. They'd have more insecurity over the fact that it's extremely hard for them to get pregnant.

In fact, if resolving a heat was as easy as knotting/penetration and had nothing to do with pheromones, omegas could resolve their own heats without needing alphas at all, and they could just use sex toys and knotting dildos, and this world doesn't work that way. Though other omegaverse worlds do.)

Are female Alphas still able to create claim bonds?

Women alphas and alphas with uteruses have literally no reason why they couldn't! It has nothing to do with genitalia and everything to do with alpha pheromones, just being alphas means they have the right pheromones to create claim bonds.

I was also wondering what the reasoning is between having the different sites be segregated by primary sex in this way.

In a word: Pregnancy.

Alphas and omegas are hyperfertile with one another. It's pregnancy. The risk is just too high. There are no ORFs on the planet - both the decent ones and the dystopian ones, that allow for mixed sex pairings because the pregnancy risk is just too high. Condoms aren't built to handle like...the semen load / repeated knotting etc. and have an extremely high fail rate and there's no contraception that works reliably for omegas in general (this is actually also why many alpha/omega pairings are same sex in general).

But yeah it's not very professional to send your partner to a rehabilitation facility and then have them get repeatedly pregnant while there, so instead all ORFs deal with the pregnancy risk this way instead, and that way there's absolutely zero risk of this happening. This is also why all the other attending staff at Hillview who are alphas are also male (like Temsen and Dr Gary), to completely erase the risk. (They don't worry about betas because they just...don't, lmao (that's good old beta bigotry)).

I hope that helps :D

[not-equippedforthis]

weekly special: holmes climbing things

[solradguy]

Whenever I see someone being transphobic on twt in a bridget thread i reply with three pictures of my mains: ky kiske from ac+r, ky kiske from rev 2, and ky kiske from strive.

it self selects for people who actually play the game. it’s canon that he’ll fight off transphobes with the blade. and if they actually played guilty gear they’d get the underlining messages

While it can be really funny to bully these guys back, please keep in mind that nothing you can say or do to these people will hurt them or waste as much of their time as what they say will stick with you or waste your time. It might be funny to send them a bunch of Ky pictures, but what they're doing is laughing that the only response the people they hate can give them is sending a bunch of pictures of anime boys.

The only thing that works is blocking them. They've turned being an asshole into a recreational sport and getting any sort of response in return is a victory for them.

[cuteniaarts]

Completely outside of my usual drawing niche, but yesterday I was talking to my sister and she showed me an old drawing I made for her in 2021 that I had deleted and completely forgot about. There was a period of time when my sister was absolutely OBSESSED with Wings of Fire, so I drew a humanisation (I can barely draw humans, man, I would actually combust if asked to draw a dragon) of a pre-canon younger version of one of her favourite characters, Peril, who I also have a soft spot for because, you guessed it, I found a way to link her to my main obsession :’) And when I saw that old piece, I just knew I had to redraw it

+ The original, low quality bc I screenshotted my sister filming her tablet screen over video call, under the cut to save myself some embarrassment 😅

[compacflt]

not to be that one its always sunny conspiracy board meme, but is the most recent excerpt you posted with macy's and sears and the goodbye kiss a part of the same ten-step guide how to kiss tom kazansky? there's one where maverick turns ice by telling him about the woman he hooked up with the night before and one where they drink wine from their hands at the beach - is the goodbye kiss another one that doesn't quite count? also please feel free to ignore if i should wait to see when this is posted in full

yes correct there are three sets of those, they are all months old at this point 😭

in the spirit of wip wednesday here’s one from the third set that i haven’t posted any excerpts of yet

we do a little prose poetry 🤪

[skloomdumpster]

#hello hello its about the circular narrative of fate and the fact sky is doomed to repeat his fathers' mistakes

#and how bloom literally walks the walk that marion did

#its about the fact we're doomed by the narrative babyyyy

#falls to the ground

pls elaborate (genuinely) i am dumb and i did not understand

you're not dumb at all anon! I just forget people cannot hear the mental essays I'm constantly rambling on lmao

Fate is very much a cyclical tale, we mention the sins of before: the war a 1000 years ago, the first Dragon Flame, Rosalind's 1st regimen, Andreas and Saul's fallout - and then we poise them against the present: the blood witch x fairy remaining conflict, the reappearance of the Dragon Flame, Farah's regimen and later Rosalind's 2nd one, Saul raising Sky vs Andreas raising Beatrix.

The narrative asks the question "will the mistakes be repeated? Can we change our fate? Can we do differently than we were taught?"

Bringing it back to skloom, the narrative asks this of Sky, in full words. Marco asks Silva "does he have the same bloodlust as Andreas?" and Silva says "We've taken our time with him. We've been careful. He's his own man."

So the question is "Is he?" Is Sky his own man or is he doomed to follow the footsteps of his biological dad?

Season 2 opens with Silva saying "It's been a few months and you're already starting to sound like him, Sky."

But not only that, we follow Sky's character as he gets closer and closer to Silva's. He kills his own father. He unravels. He drinks enough that when he's knocked out by a blood witch and other's blame it on booze, he doesn't even question it.

And finally we end season 2 taking away the person he loves. So cyclical, the question stays, will he follow into his father(s) footsteps or is Sky his own man?

Bloom is an entire other can of worms. Bloom's cycle is deeper, older and unknown to herself. She comes to Alfea having hurt someone she loved and afraid of her own powers, she spends a whole season and a time skip learning to control her powers, only to bite her own tail and end up where she began: having killed someone with her powers, scared of herself and what she'd do, feeling like she doesn't belong.

And again we're told by the show, "I'm dangerous Sky, my mom knew that. That's why she sealed herself away. The Dragon Flame doesn't belong here. I don't belong here," metaphorically putting Bloom back exactly where she began - the question: where do I belong? Can I come home? -, but literally too as Bloom walks through the portal exactly as her biological mother did and shuts herself away, walking the path to, presumably, meet with the woman herself.

Fate is about generational trauma and the tragedy of repetition, and the hanging question, "Can we change our fate?"

[xinea]

I know i'm new to kdrama and all but I am simply not built for this first male lead vs second male lead formula, especially when the second male lead is an stupid little gremlin dude whose nose snots up when he cries (affectionate)

[feral-and-or-horny]

Sorry, my last ask should have said "More like Marrow the Ninth"

I need you to know I outright cackled when I read this 😂

It's a very Gideon/Ianthe joke, lmao

[orcelito]

Uhmmmmmmm

I'm at 5.7k words for ladue chapter 3. Idk what happened lol the words just kinda appeared on the page

[living-ghost422]

there's something so romantic about a book with annotations that aren't your own

[welldrawnfish]

Do you know what its like to be trans?

[Comic description: A comic about being trans. Long descriptions follow.

1. A light-skinned trans woman with shoulder-length brown hair stands at her bathroom sink wearing a T-shirt with a fish on it, draped so that her left shoulder hangs out. The text reads, ‘Let me teach you, what its like to be trans.’ 2. A blister pack of unlabelled pills sits next to this are two prescription bottles, one of Estrodial and one of Spironolactone, the latter of which is on its side with pills spilling out. The text reads, ‘What it’s like to spend years of waiting / For the right people to tick the box to tick the box to say your sick enough to get treatment. / Treatment to be you.’ 3. The woman brushes her teeth while looking at a tablet propped up by the sink. The text reads, ‘Do you know what its like to be a prop for political power? / To know they Dont actually care?’ The word ‘actually’ is underlined. 4. The woman sticks her tongue out in concentration as she works on the clasps of a bra behind her back. The text reads, ‘Do you know what it’s like? Do wait years for your body to change?’ 5. The woman starts shaving her cheeks and chin, which are covered in cream. The text reads, ‘What its like to work (emphasis) so (end emphasis) hard to overcome every toxic gender norm?’ 6. The woman touches her own shoulders with an unhappy expression. The text reads, ‘To take stock at the damage puberty has done?’ 7. A bottle of nail polish lies on its side dripping onto the counter. Polish has been splashed against the wall. The woman’s hands are visible in the sink, with just her right thumbnail painted. The text reads, ‘Do you know what its like? / To paint your nails only to see how disgusting your hands make you feel?’ 8. The woman bends over the sink, with her eyes shut and tears streaming down her face. The text says, ‘What its like, To do your makeup wrong / and see every feature you hate (emphasis) highlighted (end emphasis)?’

9. Fully dressed with a bag on her shoulder, the woman stands in her doorway with the door open and light streaming in. The text reads, ‘Do you Know what Its like to go outside? / When all it takes is one person to think that you are large enough danger to childrens lives to end yours.’ 10. The door is closed. A single point of light streams in from the peep hole and hits the woman’s head. She has one hand on the door and is looking down at the doorknob with a sad expression. Her bag lies on the ground beside her. The text says, ‘It paralyzes you.’

11. Back to the scene in the bathroom, similar to the first panel but mirrored and with a large black X scratched over the woman’s face. The text reads, ‘Do you Know what its like? / To not be seen as a person? / Because that’s what you taught me.’ \End descriptions]

[geoffrey]

ill borrow a different copy instead i guess!!! thanks!! 👍👍👍

[theonion]

With more than 2 million displaced Palestinians facing the threat of famine, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Monday it had fulfilled its pledge to provide food assistance, throwing a single PowerBar labeled “for Gaza” into the Atlantic Ocean. USAID reportedly alerted the war-torn region to be on the lookout for the foil-wrapped item, which the agency is counting on to float eastward from North America toward the Mediterranean Sea, and which includes a handwritten note with the instruction “DO NOT EAT unless Palestinian” underlined four times.  Full Story